Bandhub info

2019-02-20

Hi all,

Over the last several months, you probably noticed a significant decrease in the rate of new functionality in Bandhub and the overall level of support.

This message is intended to clarify why this has occurred, describe the current situation of Bandhub and communicate a set of action items we are implementing effective now to ensure Bandhub’s sustainability.

BANDHUB SITUATION

Bandhub continues to thrive from a usage perspective. 450,000+ collabs have been created so far in Bandhub, with 1,200,000+ recorded tracks. This represents ~3 million+ minutes of music created in Bandhub! We have not ran a thorough analysis, but rough calculations indicate that this represents more music than all professionally recorded music ever created.

Bandhub started as a small prototype in mid-2013. The founding team would’ve never dreamed of the impact it has had for so many people – providing with an incredible opportunity to form deep connections around music.

Because early on we noticed the incredible impact Bandhub could have, we decided to invest heavily to develop the platform. This investment included a very significant amount of money from private investors, as well as the lifetime savings of the founding team. This investment paid off, as Bandhub took off from a tiny prototype to today’s thriving community. However, we have not been able so far to make Bandhub financially viable.

The reality today is that Bandhub costs more money to operate than what it receives in revenue.

We continue to believe in the potential in Bandhub’s future, but we have been unable to secure further investment funds. Founders savings have been depleted and existing and potential new investors have not responded positively to invest more.

So we are facing a very challenging set of options going forward.

Over that last several months, we have taken very significant efforts to minimize Bandhub’s operating costs, including:
– Dramatically downsize Bandhub’s team
– Completely stop remunerating work put into Bandhub.
– For more than a year, Bandhub has been ran on a completely volunteer basis only by the founding team, that has been forced to find for alternative sources of income for them and their families.
– Optimize hosting costs by tweaking various aspects of Bandhub’s technological infrastructure.

It is because of these cost-cutting efforts that the rate of new functionality and overall support has been going down over the last few months.

Unfortunately, even after these cost cutting measures, Bandhub continues to be ran at a financial deficit.

With funds at hand decreasing in an unsustainable way, we are faced with only one option: increasing revenues. We understand that this can be problematic for some folks in the community, but we have found no other way to sustain Bandhub over time.

ACTION ITEMS

(1) We will increase Bandhub Pro’s subscription price. The monthly rate will go up from 7.99/mo to 24.99/mo. We will no longer offer an annual subscription option.

(2) We will reduce the scope of Bandhub’s free tier. Bandhub free tier will be limited to participation in up to 10 collabs. Once members surpass that limit, they will be required to subscribe to Bandhub Pro. Members that don’t subscribe to Bandhub Pro at that point will not be able to participate in collabs, and their collab data older than 3 months will be deleted as storage cost is very expensive.

These changes will be announced immediately, and will start to be enforced 2 weeks from today.

We expect these changes to make Bandhub financially sustainable, so that we can all continue enjoying the incredible community that we have created together.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to bandhub.sustainability@gmail.com